On an almost perfect Skeleton of Rhytina gigas ( Rhytina Stelleri , “Steller's Sea-Cow”), obtained by Mr. Robert Damom, F.G.S., from the Pleistocene Peat-deposits on Behring's Island

Abstract

The extinction of any group of animals by the influence of man or other agencies cannot fail to be a subject of interest to the palaeontologist. Unfortunately the list of exterminated species has now become extremely large, and it seems impossible to doubt that in a few more years all the larger Mammalia not reduced to domestication, or under protective legislation, will have succumbed to man the destroyer. The musk-sheep, bison, giraffe, African elephant, wild deer, antelopes, and the large-horned wild sheep of the Alpine ranges, are all eagerly stalked down by the modern sportsman; whilst the hunter, in search of ivory, horn, bone, furs, or hides, wages a ruthless war of extermination against them all. The “fur-seal” and the “whale-fisheries” are still pursued; and though the pursuit of the latter is now much diminished, the steady destruction of all the Pinnipedia in both the northern and the southern hemisphere continues with unabated ardour. I wish, very briefly, to draw your attention this evening to a remarkable animal, now extinct, the Rhytina gigas (= Rhytina Stelleri ), commonly known as “Steller9s Sea-cow.” This interesting species of marine phytophagous mammal, once no doubt abuudant along the shores of Kamtschatka, the Kurile Islands, and Aliaska peninsula, but now entirely extinct, was first discovered by the eminent German naturalist Steller, who, in company with Vitus Behring, a captain in the Russian Navy and a celebrated navigator of the northern seas, was with his vessel and crew cast away upon Behring9s Island (where behring died), in